Since the 1970's, computers have played increasingly important roles in the processing of media content. For example, computer-based systems have been used for the storage and retrieval of content from image databases; for the on-line editing of stored video clips; and for the electronic modification of digitized images, video, and animation. However, to the best of our knowledge, no system to date has successfully integrated the diverse (and sometimes seemingly incompatible) set of capabilities that would be desirable in an optimal computer-based system for processing full-motion video and animation.
More specifically, the on-line editing products that are currently available on the market, such as Adobe Premiere.TM., generally lack the sophisticated search and retrieval capability that is necessary where the end-user doing the editing or image processing must select his content from a very large database of possibly unfamiliar video content, such as is often the case for the animation production work like Adobe Premiere.TM. typically provide only simple file directory mechanism for storing and retrieving content. Such products essentially assume that the end-user is only working with a relatively small collection of source content, is relatively familiar with that content, and does not need any significant assistance in seeking out and identifying the content that is to be edited and processed. As noted, this assumption is problematic with respect to major animation studios. Similarly, products like Adobe Premiere.TM. generally do not offer the database management capabilities required to maintain data integrity in a multi-user environment, where several users may attempt to concurrently process the same set of content.
On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 5,091,849 (Davis, et al.) does disclose a computer-based video production system that includes a distributed database of video content and supports multiple users. However, Davis follows a very traditional relational database management systems ("RDBMS") approach, and therefore organizes and accesses video content strictly in terms of a fixed, hierarchical structure (i,e., production/sequence/scene). The consequence is that an end-user who wishes to process or work with even a small fragment from a particular scene is forced to access and download all data files storing information for that scene. See Davis at column 18, line 25 through column 21, line 45, regarding the acquisition of image data files.
There is a brief discussion in Davis of a "special set of rules" for providing "limited read-write" access to portions of a scene database file that is expected to be concurrently accessed by multiple users (column 12, lines 15-30, and column 24, lines 63-67). However, from the few details provided, it appears that Davis contemplates a mechanism that is not interactive on-the-fly, but that instead requires subdividing predetermined scenes into fixed segments at some point prior to execution time (perhaps by a systems administrator). Thus, while the approach in Davis offers the advantage of database management, it inherently introduces an inflexible storage structure for media content; this rigid structure may cause potentially unacceptable inefficiency and time delay due to the unnecessary communication and processing of media content that is irrelevant to the end-user.
What is needed is a computer-based media processing system that successfully and efficiently incorporates the powerful search capabilities, data integrity, and other benefits of a multi-user RDBMS system, yet simultaneously gives end-users the freedom to interactively organize, structure, and access media content on-the-fly.